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Comment Depends on the type. (Score 1) 116

If you're fraking your significant other, I doubt that'll do any damage to the water table, unless you produce volume like Peter "Two Quarts" North, in which case there's a slight risk of organic contamination.

As for hydraulic fracturing, there is no such thing as "drinking-water-safe", just like there's no such thing as "clean coal". Cracks in the bedrock resulting from the frackage can propagate for thousands of feet above the well pipe, often unpredictably. That's kind of the point; the longer the cracks, the more gas-bearing rock is opened for collection in the well. Even if the well is drilled far below the water table, the cracks can still reach it, thus allowing hydrocarbon gases to enter and poison the water. Then there's the risk that the well casing can fail at the point where it crosses the water table, thus releasing gas and "frack fluid" (which is significantly more toxic than your "frack fluid" referenced above) into the environment.

Submission + - Jury Acquits Citizens of Illegally Filming Police (masslive.com)

sexybomber writes: The Springfield (MA) Republican reports that two men accused of illegally filming the process as they bailed friends out of jail last summer, were acquitted of all charges Tuesday. Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller initially were granted permission to film the bail process, but later were forbidden by jail officials from recording the procedure. When they continued to digitally recording their encounter with jail officials, they were arrested by police. Eyre and Mueller testified that they never attempted to hide the fact that they were recording at the jail. Not only did they ask permission to film the bail-out process — which initially was granted — but their recording devices were "out in the open," Eyre said. The Jury found the defendants not guilty of three criminal counts: Each was acquitted of unlawful wiretapping, while Mueller also was acquitted of a charge of resisting arrest.

Comment Re:rerip your CD collection (Score 1) 758

WAV stores absolute values of the samples, but it seems to me that it would be far more efficient to store the difference between two adjoining samples, rather than the absolute value, so you could store a 16 bit sample in a single byte, or even less; look at any sampled waveform and there isn't much difference between one sample and the following sample. Rather than storing a 237 and 242, where the 242 would be would be a 5, only three bits (four counting the flag that shows whether it's a positive or negative value). When the waveform is descending, you would store a negative value. With this scheme, the higher the sampling rate, the greater the compression would be, since the higher the sampling rate the closer the two adjoining samples' values would be.

I believe you've just described the derivative function of the waveform ... Slope of a function at a given point, if I remember my high school calc right.

It'd probably take longer for the machine to process it, but assuming you start at zero and go from there, it sounds possible ... I know nothing about codecs, but it's an interesting theory.

Comment Re:What is the process to impeach such a judge? (Score 1) 333

Depends on whether "reeking so badly of corruption as to blanket a mile radius with the stench" constitutes bad Behaviour on the part of a Federal judge (U.S. Const. Art. III Sec. 1) and whether two-thirds of the Senate agrees with the proposition. (Art. I Sec. 3 cl. 6). Yeah, that's... not gonna happen anytime soon.

Comment Re:No Way this will fly (Score 1) 617

Law is not a "Do as I say, not as I do" type thing.

When it's written by corporations, enacted by buffoons and sociopaths elected by those same corporations, enforced by hired thugs in both flak jackets and suits, and interpereted by judges who are bought, paid for, and traded like so many Goddamn stocks, yeah, it pretty much is. Just a question of how much it'll cost. Somehow, people seem to be okay with this. Some even consider it normal. I don't get it.

Comment Can't complain (Score 1) 439

Buffalo, N.Y., here. Currently looking into the eye of a blizzard. Not particularly worried, because the gas doesn't typically go out during a snowstorm, the lines being buried anyway, and you can always light the burners with a lighter if the piezoelectric starter won't work. Going to be cooking chili and drinking wine all day tomorrow with my lady-friend. That's okay in my book. Winter weather just means you've got to huddle together for warmth!

Comment Re:Whoops: DHS, not FBI. Same question. (Score 4, Informative) 235

No, you can't sue the DHS, or the government in general, because of a most pernicious doctrine called "sovereign immunity." Since the government created the courts and endows them with legitimacy, you can't use its own courts against it, except in very limited circumstances. (It's like dividing by zero, sort of.)

However, if an agent of the government uses his/her position to commit a crime, you can sue the agent him/herself, but not their employer. (Of course, that's no guarantee that the suit won't get tossed, only that you can, in fact, proceed with it.) Also, if they use the apparatus of the government for purposes of racial discrimination, they can also be sued. But generally, no, you can't sue.

WIkipedia explains it in more detail: linky

Comment Re:Wait... (Score 1) 360

Wait till you get to Evidence / Trial Advocacy... it's the exact same reason why you object, knowing you're going to get overruled. You can't preserve something for appeal that you never brought up / filed at trial. It may be a shotgun approach, but if you don't use too wide of a spread, it works. (I recommend a modified choke.)

/ By that analogy, Brother Syfert's trying to blow kneecaps off these punk bitches... I hope he lays the smackdown at trial.

Comment Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously) (Score 1) 741

The 9/11 hijackers did bring the boxcutters with them. They were allowed to do so because at the time boxcutters were permitted on planes. Why this was the case is beyond me (hadn't anyone ever nicked themselves with a boxcutter and thought, "gee, these things might be dangerous"?) but that's what happened.

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